Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF)

jfh

Hi All,
wondering if anyone suckler farmers here use the ICBF suckler scheme and how do the find it. have about 25 sucklers and thinking of buying a bull.
thanks

vanderbadger

ya joined online, kinda interesting to see eurostar rating of your cows etc, you can look up bulls without joining though so take a look at whatever bull you are intereted in before you buy him

wiggy123

i am with them...just the basic's
is interesting to see details of cows+bulls breedings,values etc..
never signed up to them, like paid money for the herdplus thing, did any1? how much is it..also is it worth it?

pakalasa

DAFF, the dept of agriculture run the suckler scheme. They pay 40Euro per cow.They send all the collected data to ICBF, who also collect data from the marts, factories, breed socities etc.
DAFF will then send you a report on your herd, they did this for the first time this year.

Herdplus, run directly by ICBF is additional to this, more info per cow etc. There is a cost to join this.

Here the link. I haven't joined so dont know if worth it.
http://www.icbf.com/services/herdplus/index.php

wiggy123

got said report....
its a grand job!
pity it was still the €80... €40 barely covers the ai fee for me..

vanderbadger

hmm dont think i ever got that report..anyway if you join online I think its only 20 euros the first year and then it goes up to 60 a year after that, thats for herdplus now. most of my cows are 2 star cows so I suppose you would be trying to improve things and its maybe a help in that regard, some of my replacement heifers coming thru have better ratings, annoyingly for your cows the eurostar data is not presented in the same way as you would see it in a sales catalogue or when you look up a bull, when I queried this I was told the sales catalogues are done up specially for the breeding societies which gives them an excuse to charge you a steep entry fee at this type of sales...

capslock88

I wouldn't worry too much about your cows having only 2star ratings...the reliability percentage for most cows is very low...apparently anything under 40%reliability means practically nothing...shame more farmers don't do more liner scoring...the scws has given icbf alot more data but it's only in years to come that it'l show rewards i'd say...the best place for reliable figures for bulls is the Tully sales...all bulls are linear scored and scanned for muscle and fat, while also having figures for daily liveweight gain and feed efficiency...according to the journal ther's a sale there in early may...bought a bull a few years ago there...usually the quality is pretty high...

jfh

hi capslock88, yeah i saw tully sale advertised in the journal 3rd may i presume the bulls would be far more expensive?

Bitten & Hisses

jfh wrote: »

hi capslock88, yeah i saw tully sale advertised in the journal 3rd may i presume the bulls would be far more expensive?

Most likely, but you get what you pay for. The scorers who select for Tully are very fussy about quality and won't let an average bull in the door.

jfh

Most likely, but you get what you pay for. The scorers who select for Tully are very fussy about quality and won't let an average bull in the door.
ya agree with you on that, prob go to the lim sale in roscrea next month
thanks for all suggestions

capslock88

i wouldn't think they'd be that overly expensive in Tully....sure maybe there'd be a few bulls in each breed that'd make big money but theres usually a good selection of bulls that would be affordable enough (pick of 100) and i suppose you have to be prepared to pay slightly more for the (reliable)figures, so you've an idea what your buying!...the limousins in roscrea wouldn't be that cheap either i'd imagine!but its all about what you're looking for and your budget!

bogman_bass

I'm signed up to herd plus. its value for money if you are going to use the figures to identify underperforming cows.

Tully bulls dont tend to reach the huge prices of the premier sales. You get a quality bull that has been tested, has good figures and most importatly has a clean bill of health. no IBR, lepto or BVD

Farmtrader

I was at a sale in Tully about 2 years ago, the top 2 bulls make big money. But other than that there was some real value there. They were mostly Limousins though, I think you can get a listings and entries off Tully before you travel.
The demand for quality bulls has changed a little since then though.

island of tighe

i find icbf and farmers journal placing too much emphises on eurostar figures.young breeding bulls will all have relibility figures of well below 40%.these figures are being overestimated which may lead to a significant drop in a year after you purchase your bull.the dovea ai catologue has updated figures on all its beef breed bulls.out of approx 24 bulls about 17-18 bulls recorded a big drop from their origianal figures.i bought a 5 star limousin bull 3 years ago with figures coming out his backside for 3k.calves were very average.i culled him and bought a 3 star limousin by ronick hawk x ferry.famous looking bull,average figures cost a little over 5k.i have 20 calves on the ground now and they are top quality.take a good look at the bull before you look in to the figures

Muckit

island of tighe wrote: »

i find icbf and farmers journal placing too much emphises on eurostar figures.young breeding bulls will all have relibility figures of well below 40%.these figures are being overestimated which may lead to a significant drop in a year after you purchase your bull.the dovea ai catologue has updated figures on all its beef breed bulls.out of approx 24 bulls about 17-18 bulls recorded a big drop from their origianal figures.i bought a 5 star limousin bull 3 years ago with figures coming out his backside for 3k.calves were very average.i culled him and bought a 3 star limousin by ronick hawk x ferry.famous looking bull,average figures cost a little over 5k.i have 20 calves on the ground now and they are top quality.take a good look at the bull before you look in to the figures

Welcome to boards island of tighe I totally agree with what you're saying. Trying to put facts and figures on an animal to the degrees eurostar and blup ratings are trying to do, is unrealistic and unachieveable.

You've hit the nail on the head as regards these scoring systems major flaws. Because the reliability figures for the majority of young bulls sold at sales at under 50%, they are next to useless.

The sad thing is that alot of innocent buyers are dupted into putting too much weight on these figures and buying bulls based on them. They bring the 'prize bull' home, proud as punch. A year later and there's a very sorry looking melted bull looking back shamefully at the farmer having produced very average calves.